For the past year, Conor McGregor has bent the UFC to his will. Jose Aldo has had enough.
Aldo, the interim featherweight champion after he beat Frankie Edgar at UFC 200, is so upset he has threatened to retire if the UFC doesn’t grant his release.
“After all this, I see I can’t trust any word from president Dana White, and who’s in charge of the promotion now is Conor McGregor. Since I’m not here to be an employee of McGregor, today I ask to cancel my contract with the UFC,” Aldo told Brazilian website Combate on Tuesday.
The Brazilian is upset with White because he has allowed McGregor to choose his own fights after he knocked out Aldo with a single punch just seconds into their featherweight title bout at UFC 194 in December.
After gaining the featherweight title, McGregor moved up to 170 pounds to battle Nate Diaz twice. The Irish superstar now is set to fight for the 155-pound lightweight title against champion Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205 on Nov. 12 at Madison Square Garden.
Throughout McGregor’s weight-class adventures, White repeatedly has said he would take away McGregor’s featherweight title. It hasn’t happened.
Adding to the perceived insult, Aldo said White offered him the chance to fight on the UFC 205 card, but not against McGregor.
“I heard about everything that happened through my coach,” Aldo said, according to a translation done by MMAFighting.com. “He had spoken with [UFC matchmaker] Sean Shelby Saturday and Sean still had no answer about anything, and asked if I could fight on November 12. My coach said that if it would be Conor, yes, and then Sean asked him if I would fight Max Holloway or Anthony Pettis.
“We waited until Dana publicly said that he wanted this fight with McGregor to happen. And then we expected it to happen: I’d get my rematch to unify the featherweight belts, or I’d have my belt back and fight Holloway or Pettis, since Dana [White] said all the time that Conor couldn’t keep both belts. But, to my surprise, I heard last night about the fight between McGregor and Eddie Alvarez, which was also denied by Dana last week. And to make it worse, he would keep the featherweight belt, and possibly having two belts at the same time.”
Though White recently said McGregor will have to vacate one of his titles if he wins at UFC 205, McGregor promised fans he was going to leave the big event at MSG with both belts.
“I’m going to wrap one on one shoulder and I’m going to wrap the other on the other shoulder and they’re going to need a f—ing army to come take them belts off me,” McGregor said at the official UFC 205 press conference on Tuesday.
Given McGregor’s stardom and White’s track record, Aldo believes the UFC is now under the Dubliner’s control.
“I don’t believe in Dana saying that Conor would have to vacate one of the belts after UFC 205 because, based on what we’re seeing, this type of decision is not in his hands anymore, Conor makes the calls now,” Aldo told Combate. “They let him move up to the division above without losing his belt, and also let him do any fight he wants. I understand that he sells a lot, but it gets to a limit when it’s no longer a sport, it becomes a circus. I don’t want any type of fight with the UFC. The only thing I want is to go on with my life, and they will go on with theirs.”
After hearing about Aldo’s angry interview, White spoke with Combate’s TV channel and said he would patch things up with his Brazilian star. However, Aldo soon called into the channel himself and didn’t back down an inch.
“If [White] likes me and my family, I just hope he released me. I don’t want a fight. I want to leave as I came in,” Aldo said. “The UFC and WEC didn’t give me anything. Everything I conquered was my merit and from my team. Nobody gave me anything. I conquered everything. And I gave them a lot more than they gave me back. I just want them to release me from my contract. I’m not a whore to sell myself.
“I don’t even want to fight MMA. I want to follow a career in another sport. That’s what I want.”
While Aldo is complaining about not getting to fight McGregor at UFC 205, he turned down the opportunity for a rematch at UFC 196 in March.
That card was headlined by McGregor’s bout with Rafael dos Anjos, who was the lightweight champion at the time. However, 12 days before the fight was set to take place, dos Anjos broke his foot and the UFC asked Aldo to step in. Saying he didn’t have enough time to train, Aldo turned down the fight and Nate Diaz, who was training for a triathlon at the time, stepped in and stunningly choked out McGregor in the second round.